The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to efficient blind decoding of a search space.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
In LTE systems, a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) carries data and signaling information to a user equipment, including downlink control information (DCI) messages. A DCI message includes information regarding downlink scheduling assignments, uplink resource grants, transmission scheme, uplink power control, hybrid automatic return repeat request (HARQ) information, modulation and coding schemes (MCS) and other information. A DCI message can be UE-specific (dedicated to a single UE) or cell-specific (common across multiple UEs) and placed in different dedicated and common search spaces within the PDCCH depending on a format of the DCI message. A UE attempts to decode a DCI by performing a process known as a blind decode, during which multiple decode attempts are carried out in the dedicated and common search spaces until the DCI message is detected. Conventional blind decodes are inefficient and require an excessive number of decoding operations.